The present proposal suggests that if the variables that control the various patterns of ethanol consumption can be identifed, then the patterns of ethanol consumption leading to excessive intake and the development of dependence will be able to be identified and generated experimentally. An ability to do so would be an enormous contribution to an understanding of human alcoholism. It would provide an experimental preparation with which to examine the long term physiological effects of excessive alcohol consumption uncontaminated by nutritional and other health care deficiencies usually observed with human alcoholics and with present methods of inducing consumption in animals. The role of patterns of alcohol consumption as a potential contributor to the development of human alcoholism will be able to be clarified. The effectiveness of potential methods to decrease excessive consumption will be able to be tested under controlled laboratory conditions. In oral self administration studies, ethanol must be made available to the subject according to some schedule of access. These access schedules, either time or response based, are major factors controlling ethanol consumption. They also interact with the access schedules of other consumables known to influence ethanol consumption. The proposed experiments will examine, in a simulated foraging enviroment, the effect of manipulating several types of environmental constraint on feeding and drinking on the amount and daily patterns of ethanol consumption. In a series of nine experiments, the influence on patterns of ethanol consumption and blood alcohol levels of: 1. the number of responses required to produce access to ethanol, food and water, 2. the schedule of ethanol, food and water, 3. within bout constraints on the rate of ingestion of ethanol, and 4. the interactions among the above variables will be examined.